Property such as land, buildings and equipment, factories and tools, is owned by the kibbutz, is owned jointly (collectively) by the community.

http://www.solhaam.org/articles/kibbut.html

KIBBUTZIM

The kibbutz is the best known of Israel's three types of co-operative farming settlements <7>. Its members live in a single community and share the work. The word kibbutz is the Hebrew name for such a community.

Kibbutzim <1> were mainly agricultural co-operative communities. Property such as land, buildings and equipment, factories and tools, is owned by the kibbutz, is owned jointly (collectively) by the community.

There is no private wealth and members transfer all their assets (but not personal belongings) to the community when joining. The kibbutz looks after all the needs of its members and their families and usually provides communal dining, laundry and other services and facilities for its members.

Families do have private accommodation and some personal property, and what is provided depends to a considerable extent on how rich the kibbutz is, on what they can afford.

'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need' is practiced. The kibbutz looks after its members from cradle to grave and this includes education and social security. Children are largely brought up by the community.


It was only through this kind of co-operative living that a deprived people could settle successfully in a hostile environment. Aided by the community at large, the settlements successfully struggled to establish themselves and prospered.

But there are few kibbutz members who do not know that the pioneering spirit, the drive and motivation to succeed, diminished and evaporated with success. Kibbutz members are aware of the need for rejuvenating the movement, its settlements, its ideological motivation and its drive.


Children were brought up communally in age groups, away from their parents. One age group would progress from creche to nursery to school and so on, living together during the week and seeing their parents, and perhaps living with them, only at weekends.

This may have freed both parents for work and defence in the initial struggle for survival. But the practice was continued when successful, possibly to free women for work and so increase production. But it was done at the expense of the family.

Of any group in the country, the kibbutz children consequently showed the highest incidence of mental problems. The kibbutzim have had to backtrack and now give their children a more normal and strengthening family-life experience with their parents.


Kibbutzim now own and operate factories, hotels and restaurants, and much else. Degania, for example, has a factory with an annual turnover of about USD 15 million which provides roughly 75 per cent of its income. {KIB 02}

And kibbutzim are successful. Three per cent of Israel's population, about 125,000 people, live in 270 kibbutzim ranging in size from say 200 to 2,000 members. They produce something like 50 per cent of Israel's agricultural produce and about 9 per cent of its industrial goods.